


pivot step

by strawhatmikans



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Injury Recovery, M/M, and patience, lacrosse au, meditations on hunger, say it with me: i love hinata shouyou, some american high school somewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28107753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawhatmikans/pseuds/strawhatmikans
Summary: Hinata presses his hand slow to Kageyama’s cheek and thinks,I want to be careful. I want to do this,Kageyama’s blush warm against his palm,again and again, for a long, long time.Hinata tears his ACL. Summer teaches him to be patient.[ very late ssw day 1 summer/struggle ]
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 25
Kudos: 77
Collections: Haikyuu: Spiker-Setter Week





	pivot step

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chewhy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewhy/gifts).



> for chewy – thank u for your unending patience :) here's a small gift for u !!! finally !!!!
> 
> some info about american high school lacrosse that you really don't need to know for this fic but might find helpful or interesting:  
> \- the positions: there are 4 attackers, 4 defenders, 3 midfielders, and a goalie. defenders and attackers are restricted to certain parts of the field but midfielders can run around everywhere which is Very Exhausting but they are kinda like a setter in that they set up attacks and are skilled at everything  
> \- the eight meter, the twelve meter, the goal circle: some of the impt lines on the field  
> \- varsity/junior varsity/club: some high schools have both varsity and junior varsity teams for a single sport, varsity is usually for 11th and 12th graders and some especially skilled underclassmen, while junior varsity is like a feeder into varsity for 9th-10th graders. club teams are private teams not affiliated with a school; usually serious athletes who want to play college/professional will play on a club team as well as their school team.  
> **based on my personal knowledge of girls lacrosse! that said, boys lax is a v different game and i Did Not do as much research as i should have... pls forgive me for inaccuracies
> 
> okay! enjoy! my brain melted while writing this but i had to get it out. so so many thoughts on shouyou's hunger and ambition, and how he learned to follow it instead of a) giving it up or b) letting it run him to the ground

The moment his fingers release their grip on the top of the chain link fence, Hinata realizes his mistake. But it’s too late, and the dread that tenses every muscle in his body does nothing to stop him from soon becoming an orange splat on the bright green Astro Turf. He makes a desperate effort to twist in the air, extending his left foot down, down, sending a prayer up to whoever might be listening—

His left leg gives under the rest of his weight, and Hinata lands in a heap on the ground. Back pressed to the turf, limbs splayed out, he screws his eyes shut against the August sun appraising him from the sky. Hinata lies there, unmoving, his brain lagging as if it’s still somewhere on the other side of the fence. Or maybe somewhere back in March, before all this— 

_don’t worry, this is a common injury. the recovery phase is about six months, and if you’re careful you’ll be back on the field in no—_

Hinata imagines himself boneless until the breath in his lungs unfreezes and he bends his knees, left, then right. No pain. He sits up slowly, his heart still lurching like it’s trying to escape right out of his chest. Hinata wouldn’t blame it. His body isn’t the best place to be these days.

His right knee, barely a knee at all under the ace wraps and a bulky, hinged brace, stares up at him in judgement. 

“Sorry,” Hinata says, somehow compelled to explain himself. “I forgot, okay?”

His knee twinges in response. It’s a funny thing, when your knee is all swollen and compressed under industrial-strength wraps, you can feel your heartbeat like an electric current on top of your skin. 

Hinata’s doctor (and his physical therapist, and his coach, and his mom, and his grandma, and—you get it) would say he’s being irresponsible, but he’s _trying_. He really is. It’s just his personal philosophy that if he sets his mind to it and pretends that he’s more recovered than he actually may or may not be, then his body will follow. Mind over matter? That’s a thing, right?

But maybe he should’ve thought a little harder before scaling a chain link fence and dropping down on the other side as if he still has two functioning knees to absorb the impact. 

_That stunt you pulled just now could’ve cost you your other knee_ , says a voice in his head that sounds awfully like Iwaizumi-san at the orthopedic center. _Then what? What are you going to do with no knees?_

Hinata shakes the voice out of his head, loose turf flying out of his hair, and picks himself up off the ground. The late summer heat sticks to his skin in a layer of sweat. Bits of turf gravel cling stubbornly to his legs and arms—brushing them off is a hopeless endeavor—but he doesn’t mind. Hinata loves the turf. 

He makes his way across it now, heading toward one of the nets still left out in a goal circle. Back home, everyone always played on grass. Dusty, pockmarked, overgrown, balding-in-some-spots, city grass. Ground balls were absolute hell, and the less experienced player would often take a tumble if so much as a foot got snagged by a weed while cutting in for a pass.

Here, on this bouncy fake grass, an oversaturated green just a shade too bright to pass as natural, it’s different. Hinata is sure most of his teammates have never scrimmaged for a ground ball on real grass before. Then again, it was on a fancy Astro Turf field just like this one when Hinata’s knee had spontaneously self-destructed, so.

Hinata dumps his bag on the ground by his feet a little harder than necessary. Ball already nestled in his stick pocket, he focuses on the goal in front of him. He widens his stance and prepares to take a few warm up shots. Hinata sets his eyes on the top left corner, winds up for an overhand, breathes in, ou—

“Oi.”

His shot goes wide. The ball misses the post by a few inches and flies out of bounds, puttering sadly onto the turf beyond the endline. 

When Hinata turns around, Kageyama Tobio is standing behind him, less than twenty feet away. He’s regarding Hinata’s out of bounds shot with a look of such contempt that Hinata automatically shrinks away. 

The field suddenly feels very, very big, and very, very quiet.

“What are you doing here?” Hinata, nerves frayed, says the first thing that comes to mind. He cringes a little at how rude he sounds, but something about Kageyama Tobio’s face is making him defensive. 

“What?” Kageyama Tobio’s weird expression becomes even more weird. “I just had practice.”

Several things click in Hinata’s mind at once, and abruptly he wonders if the fancy turf beneath his feet could perhaps turn into quicksand and swallow him up. That would be helpful.

“Um,” he says, drawing a blank. “Uh.”

His plan was perfect. So perfect he had not considered this scenario. After all, the Adlers should’ve finished practice nearly an hour ago, and there are no other clubs who have a reservation for this field until tomorrow, according to the website he’d pored over for hours last night. Hinata had figured this field would be deserted by now. This _private_ field. With _private_ equipment like the goal he’d definitely just shot at. Maybe since he missed the shot it doesn’t count? Is he a criminal? Can Kageyama Tobio report him? He didn’t even know Kageyama Tobio played for the Adlers, but he supposes it makes sense. Is he going to—

“Oi,” Kageyama Tobio says again, face all pinched, mouth scowling. 

Hinata crosses his fingers behind his back. Please don’t kick me out, please don’t—

“Don’t get in my way,” Kageyama Tobio says, then he turns around and walks to the far side of the field. 

Hinata closes his mouth. He watches Kageyama Tobio set up around the opposite twelve meter, an Adidas bag that he somehow hadn’t noticed before lying open on the ground by his feet, and already the relief Hinata feels at getting to stay is turning sharp and bitter on his tongue.

As if just _getting to stay_ had ever been enough.

Something twists cold and hard in his gut, and Hinata bites down on the inside his cheek to curb his irritation. Kageyama Tobio’s back cuts a graceful line, his elbows high, his form a perfect coiled spring. His dark, sleeveless shirt creases at the waist as he rotates his shoulders back. Hinata tears his eyes away before he can see what is an inevitably perfect shot and turns around, considering his own goal. Top right corner this time. Maybe Kageyama Tobio is kind of an asshole, but that’s fine. He’s going to beat him anyway.

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


Hinata has always known what it’s like to _want_. He knows it like he knows the texture of his own tongue, or the ache in his legs when he bikes up a steep hill. It’s a crawling under his skin. It’s a sweet tooth, an appetite, a mangeable craving. His stomach growls when he needs to eat. So he eats.

It was his mom losing her job that had brought him and Natsu out here to live with their grandma, but it was this simple hunger that made him stay, even when Natsu went back home. Karasuno High School plays good lacrosse. He wants to play good lacrosse. So he stays.  
  


–

  
  
  


Hinata’s sidearm shot hasn’t always been the most accurate, but this one nails the opposite post with a satisfying _ping_ and ricochets into the back of the goal with enough force to pull on the net. Hinata shakes his hair out of his eyes, pleased. His aim is sharper than usual today, and the water bottles he’d tied to the corners of the goal as makeshift targets are all crushed up already. He takes a few steps to the left for a more difficult angle, scoops up another ball, and winds up.

“You’re number 10.”

This time, the shot doesn’t go wide. Instead it flies harmlessly into the goal where it would have bounced right off a goalie’s chest protector. Hinata stares in disbelief. He turns, slowly.

Kageyama Tobio is regarding him with another weird expression on his face. Somehow, even from fifteen feet away, he achieves the effect of looming over Hinata. “Number 10,” he says again, like a buffering A.I. Or something. Hinata doesn't know how A.I. works. “On junior varsity.”

Something in Hinata’s chest glows without his permission. _Number 10_ , the other coaches said last season. _Shut down their number 10._ But he tamps down on it and glares at the frowning A.I. before him. Kageyama Tobio. Number 9. Karasuno High School Boys Varsity Lacrosse. Midfielder, the only sophomore on the varsity team last season, and already a starting player by the first game. Everyone knows Kageyama Tobio.

Kageyama doesn’t ask Hinata’s name or introduce himself. Instead, he frowns at Hinata’s right knee and says, “What’s wrong with you?”

Hinata blanches. His free hand curls into a fist and opens again. He swallows and stares somewhere past Kageyama’s left ear. “I tore my ACL in April.”

Kageyama’s brows furrow. “April? I saw you play in the Date Tech game.”

 _What_ , some tiny corner of Hinata’s mind blinks out of focus. _Kageyama watched the Date Tech game?_

“It happened during the game right after Date Tech.” After a moment, Hinata adds, “Our first playoffs game.” 

Kageyama’s frown somehow etches even deeper into his face. 

Hinata fumbles in the silence. “I’m Hinata Shouyou,” he says, unthinking. He really wishes Kageyama would stop staring at his knee. 

Kageyama looks up, and surprise softens the edges of his frown. 

Huh. It’s not like Hinata had expected a different color or something, but for some reason the blue of Kageyama’s eyes startles the breath out of him. Like the turf, Hinata thinks. The kind of color that seems just a bit too bright, too brilliant, to be natural. 

Kageyama opens his mouth. “Okay,” he says, after a while.

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


An ache, an itch, a crawling under his skin. That’s how it’s always been. Then, in April, that thing under his skin, no longer content with being flesh and blood and bone, had ruptured its way out of Hinata’s body. Tearing the cartilage in his knee clean in half, his body folding to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. 

The snap- _pop_ of it took only a fraction of a second, the slightest twist of his knee, but—in reality it was a slow, invisible thing. It must have been early fall, leaves just beginning to wrinkle and brown, Karasuno’s evergreen turf springing beneath his feet for the first time, when that simple hunger inside him had first begun to outgrow its own body. 

Hinata has always been small. His body always encountering its own borders.

 _On junior varsity, you’ll get to be a starter every game,_ Coach Ukai said. _You need the game experience. The way you are now, you’re not ready for varsity._

In March, Coach took the junior varsity team to watch a varsity game against Shiratorizawa. Karasuno lost the game, but Hinata will never forget how it felt to sit in the bleachers and just—watch. His feet shifting, hands fluttering, knees bouncing, Tsukishima glaring at him like he might push Hinata off the creaking stands if he doesn’t _stop fidgeting, God, are you a little kid? Is this your first time watching a game?_

Hinata barely hears him. He watches as number 9 intercepts a pass, runs the ball down the length of the entire field, fakes out the defenders closing in on him, and makes the most precise top corner shot Hinata has ever seen. Hinata’s skin _buzzes._ He raises a hand to his forehead, half-expecting to find himself burning a high fever. Kageyama Tobio is only a sophomore, just like him. Hinata thinks they might have even sat together in room 212 taking make-up exams before. But like this, Kageyama Tobio an orange-black blur of motion on the field, Hinata sitting wide-eyed and so, so far away, he can’t be sure. 

_You’re not ready_ , Coach said. 

Kageyama Tobio is not particularly fast or big or flashy, but he has a way of making everyone else on the field, teammates and opponents alike, look _not ready_. 

By then, the hunger had already sharpened into a knife. Hinata’s hand, finally still, curls into a fist on his lap. The hunger cuts him in two. He opens his palm, and finds it empty. 

Below, Kageyama makes another perfect pass. Karasuno scores. Hinata burns.

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


Summer before junior year moves at a snail’s pace. Hinata’s classmates are busy with summer jobs, tutoring, binge-watching, and who knows what else. His teammates are playing for club teams. Hinata, for all of June and most of July, sulks around the house and makes a huge nuisance of himself. He calls Natsu so many times she threatens to block his number. He grits his teeth through physical therapy and thinks very hard about how everyone, maybe even Tsukishima, is most definitely surpassing him. Practicing and playing, while Hinata tries to lift his leg an inch off the table without breaking into a cold sweat. 

August with all its searing heat cuts through the helpless stretch of summer like a knife through softened butter. 

Hinata bikes to the fields three days a week after Adlers practice, and Kageyama is always there, sometimes watching, always impassive and _extremely unhelpful_ , as Hinata carefully struggles over the fence. Hinata would rather eat turf than suggest Kageyama open the gate for him.

One day, Kageyama crosses the field and drops his bag down next to Hinata’s. 

Hinata stares.

“Practicing with a partner is more efficient,” Kageyama says. His face says, _you suck_. 

For the first time, it occurs to Hinata that maybe Kageyama isn’t supposed to be using these fields either. He kind of assumed Kageyama was supposed to be here, staying for extra practice or something. But wouldn’t he have teammates to play with? Hinata gets the feeling that he’s at the very bottom of the list of people Kageyama would want to practice with, but... Kageyama is always alone when Hinata arrives at the field. Maybe the list isn’t very long.

And so they practice. And so Hinata sees Kageyama’s perfect form up close and so often he feels like it’s burned on the back of his eyelids. It’s not just his shooting form, but the way he passes, the way he cradles, even the way he drops low to scoop balls up from the ground. Coach is always yelling at them to stop being lazy with ground balls during practice, but everyone flips the ball up if they can get away with it. Kageyama doesn’t. He’s like a nonstop highlight reel. Like every movement is planned, considered, a part of a greater choreography no one else knows. 

Hinata feels grounded in comparison. His every movement planned, considered, a part of a greater choreography dictated by Iwaizumi-san’s strict six-month recovery schedule. No running. No jumping. No sudden changes in direction. Absolutely no pivoting on his bad leg.

Kageyama makes a face when Hinata admits he can’t do cutting drills yet, but otherwise takes all this in with a matter-of-fact patience that makes every last drop of Hinata’s own patience evaporate. Kageyama moves like an animation drawn frame-by-frame by a meticulous hand, and Hinata falters his way through every stop-start movement like his next move might be the one to undo the careful stitching of his rehabilitated knee. Kageyama waits, unpitying. Unhurried.

Hinata looks, and wants. It’s like that Shiratorizawa game all over again, something vicious curling in his stomach, his hands opening around nothing. But now Kageyama is only fifteen feet away. Now Kageyama’s looking back. 

_You’re number 10._

Hinata wonders what he sees.

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


“I’m going to be on varsity next year.”

Kageyama catches the ball like he always does, without looking and with a quiet ease that pisses Hinata off. He switches to his left hand and passes it back.

Hinata catches. Bristles at the expression on Kageyama’s face. “What?”

Instead of responding, Kageyama stares pointedly at the ball until Hinata finally passes. It’s a shitty pass, but of course he doesn’t drop it, because he’s Kageyama Tobio. “Maybe,” Kageyama Tobio says.

And as if to make a point, the next pass from Kageyama nearly bounces off the inside wall of his stick pocket. _Maybe???_ Hinata feels like swallowing a whole handful of those gross-smelling herbs his grandma grows in the backyard. 

“I saw you in the Date Tech game,” Kageyama says. “You’re fast. If you can still do that, then I—” he catches Hinata’s pass as easily as ever, as if Hinata didn’t swing extra hard on purpose. “—I want to play with you.”

Hinata gapes. 

Kageyama glares and chucks the ball back at him. Hinata narrowly escapes getting his head taken off. “But your stick skills suck,” Kageyama snaps. “And your game sense.”

_And you’re not fast anymore, are you?_

The silence stretches. Hinata’s brace feels too tight around his knee. Then Kageyama says, with all the air of a player whom the team’s entire offense centers around, “If you’re not fast, smart, or skilled enough to beat your defender, I won’t pass to you. I only pass to people who can score.”

Somehow this feels more final than anything Coach Ukai has ever said. 

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


And so August passes like this: Hinata wakes with the sun, sets out a cup of tea for his grandma, and texts Natsu—who is getting to the age where big brothers are not so cool anymore and Hinata really, really, doesn’t want his baby sister to forget him. And ever since Iwaizumi-san had cleared him for biking— _light_ biking, Hinata are you listening—he spends time biking his way through town every day. Past Sakanoshita Market, the only Japanese business in town, past the IHOP with the sticky tables, past the one laundromat and the closed records store next door. On Adlers practice days, he bikes past the arcade too, and the old church with the peeling white paint, and all the way down to the fields.

One day, as Hinata bikes down Linwood Ave trying to remember if Izumi is working today or free to play Mario Kart at his place on Dowers St until their eyes glaze over, he catches sight of something that makes him nearly skid into the curb. 

Hinata steadies his handlebars, one hand on the brakes, heart skittering off beat as if caught by its own inertia, and there, that’s _definitely_ Kageyama Tobio’s side profile peering through the wiped-down, scratched-up windows of Sakanoshita Market. He’s glaring at... a row of milk boxes? Hinata’s pretty sure that’s where the milk boxes are, next to the yogurt and fruit teas. Is Kageyama wearing a _beanie?_ Are those _jeans?_ There might even be something thin and silver and light-catching around his neck, or maybe that’s just the afternoon sun. 

Hinata stares. Kageyama stares at the milk. 

After a minute, Hinata kicks off the curb and lets gravity nudge his wheels into turning. He just saw Kageyama yesterday. Today, other club teams had the fields booked from dawn to dusk. Now it’s 12:32 PM and Kageyama Tobio is standing in Sakanoshita Market dressed like a regular teenager, maybe even a _cool_ one, and having a staredown with milk. Hinata coasts down three more streets before he realizes he should’ve turned right for Izumi’s house two intersections ago. 

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


Kageyama opens the gate for him. 

For a moment, Hinata considers parking his bike against the fence and scaling it anyways. He peers up at the top of the chain link and thinks of the time the back of his shorts got caught and he nearly got the world’s lamest, most painful wedgie. Hinata wheels his bike around and goes through the gate.

Hinata can practically feel the smugness radiating off of Kageyama, but when he turns around, Kageyama is staring at something with an expression that’s almost curious. Hinata follows his gaze to where he’s left his bike on its side (the kickstand doesn’t work so well anymore) just past the end line of the field.

It’s an old bike, blue paint chipped off a long time ago and more than one dent in the frame, but the gears are well-oiled and everything works as it should. Hinata had insisted on bringing it with him when he moved here, even though the town is so spread out and everyone old enough to drive has a car.

“You really bike here every day?” Kageyama finally asks. 

“Well, you see,” Hinata hedges. He shifts the strap of his bag into a more comfortable position on his shoulder. “I can’t drive.”

“You’re sixteen,” Kageyama says, disbelieving, like Hinata’s confessed to a horrible crime.

“So?”

Kageyama’s stare-off with his bike continues for a moment longer, then suddenly his incredulous expression sours like a lemon. “Where do you live?”

 _Huh?_ Hinata wonders for a moment if he should lie. Who knows what Kageyama wants his address for? “Uh,” he says, and, absurdly, his mind goes to Kageyama in his beanie and jeans and a silver curb chain around his neck. Did he end up getting the milk? Dammit. Hinata silently apologizes to his grandma for potentially endangering their home and says, “Woodlawn Avenue and Morris street, down by that strip mall.”

Kageyama’s sour expression takes on a positively acidic edge. “That’s—almost nine miles away.”

“What?” It kind of feels like he’s being challenged, except he doesn’t know _what for_ , but hell if he’s going to back down. Hinata crosses his arms, defensive. “I’m taking it easy. I used to bike to school every day.”

“Nobody does that.”

Hinata frowns. “Well, I do.”

“Your stamina—” Kageyama bites off his words.

Oh, Hinata thinks. He gets it now. He beams. “Bet you couldn’t do it.” 

“Dumbass. Why would I _want_ to.”

“You couldn’t, even if you wanted to.”

Kageyama’s fingers flex as if they want to grab Hinata by the hair. Hinata pushes his luck. “You know, I have the stamina. Maybe I’ll even play midfield next year. I’m coming for your position, Kageyama.”

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


Of course, Kageyama shows up the next day on his own creaky old bike. If Hinata’s bike is old, this one looks like it’s from the stone ages. Did Kageyama find this in a scrap heap?

Hinata feels trepidation just looking at the thing. “Is the chain falling off?”

“ _No._ ”

“I can’t believe you really rode that thing here.” Hinata considers the bike for a moment longer. “Actually, I can completely believe it.”

“Shut up,” Kageyama says, and throws a ball at Hinata’s head. 

Later, when the sun is beginning to dip low in the sky and Hinata’s arms ache from passing, they sit on the ground by their tipped-over bikes (Kageyama’s kickstand doesn’t work either) and Hinata counts the days left of summer by drawing lines on the bare skin above his knee.

Kageyama emerges from rummaging in his bottomless Adidas bag with two milk boxes, and for one very confusing second Hinata thinks he’s going to offer one to him. Instead, Kageyama pokes a straw into each box in one practiced movement, then brings both to his mouth. At the same time.

Hinata watches in mild horror as Kageyama proceeds to empty two milk cartons from Sakanoshita Market in under a minute and a half, as if he does this every day. Kageyama Tobio: number 9. Midfielder, the only sophomore on varsity last year. Never drops a pass. Wears beanies. Sometimes goes to Sakanoshita Market. Will ride a scrap-metal, chain-falling-off bike if it means he can beat Hinata. Really, really, _really_ likes milk?

Hinata is so occupied with trying to revise what he knows of Kageyama Tobio that he barely registers Kageyama pulling several clementines out of his bag.

“Give me your hand,” Kageyama says.

By the time Hinata catches up and holds out his hand, Kageyama’s long fingers are already making quick work of the clementine skin, curling it away from the flesh in one unbroken strip. He splits the naked clementine into neat quarters and drops all four pieces into Hinata’s palm. Hinata stares, struck, one hand still tapping out the last days of summer on his thigh and the other clutching a perfectly peeled and quartered clementine, as Kageyama starts peeling a second one for himself. 

The juice bursts cool and sweet on his tongue. His fingers sticky with residue. Hinata catches a drop with his mouth before it can slide down his wrist, and when he looks up Kageyama is staring back at him, looking exactly the same as yesterday, and the day before, and all summer before that. But this Kageyama peels clementines. Hinata is _so confused._

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


Kageyama has made it his mission to improve Hinata’s stick skills. Usually this simply means taking every opportunity to remind Hinata that he sucks, but today he tosses the ball into the air again and again, above his head, behind his back, under his legs, sideways and upside down. This is a juggle he apparently invented himself after getting bored of the standard stick tricks. Hinata feels dizzy just watching. 

But he watches: the mid-afternoon light glancing off Kageyama’s eyes as blue flickers and flashes, following the ball with an attentiveness that makes Hinata’s toes curl. The relaxed curve of his mouth. He wonders if Kageyama knows he’s smiling.

“Hey,” Kageyama says, pausing in the middle of a motion, and the ball finds its own way back to his stick pocket like it doesn’t know how to do anything else. Kageyama’s eyes aren’t following it anymore. “Stop staring like that. I’ll teach this to you.”

All the attention of those unblinking blue eyes that had followed the ball in flight with an awed devotion, as if enchanted, now pinning every part of Hinata in place.

And suddenly the summer, once an impatient swelling Hinata didn’t know what to do with except to keep pushing and pressing and willing it to go away, stretches out into a slow-burning, blue infinity before him.

“Watch out, Kageyama,” Hinata says, his stupid mouth still running even though he feels frozen, caught, deer in the headlights. His voice much too loud, as if desperately trying to pull together all this unravelling with only the force of its arrogance. “I’m gonna do your fancy stick tricks better than you. Then you’ll regret everything.”

“I’ve—I’ve been doing these since I was _seven_ , idiot,” Kageyama hisses, ears going red, steam practically rising off his cheeks, and after digging a knuckle into the top of Hinata’s head and tearing into him for not being able to do even the simplest trick, teaches him the whole juggle anyways. 

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


That night, Hinata turns on the shower, strips down to his skin, and stares at himself in the mirror until the glass fogs up and his reflection blurs. 

“See here,” Doctor Jiang said all those months ago, pointing to the black and white smudges on his screen. “Here, and here.”

The scans might as well have been abstract art to Hinata. He stared at his knee, rendered in black and white and inside out, and saw nothing. It couldn’t be his knee. It looked nothing like it. He didn’t recognize the white spots Doctor Jiang called _bone bruises_ , which—how could bone even bruise, under all this flesh? He didn’t recognize the frayed ends of white thread that Doctor Jiang pointed to and said, _complete tears like this are easy to identify._

Hinata almost asked the doctor if there was something wrong with his stomach too, the way it was dropping out between his knees, down five stories to the parking lot, down to where his mom was waiting in the car. She had driven three hours out from the city for this. Just in case, she’d said. Don’t worry. But just in case.

Nearly five months later, Hinata faces himself in the mirror and wonders how little he will recognize in another five months. A year. Five years. This body in the mirror, already so different from that day in Dr. Jiang’s office, and what about a year ago? Five? Hinata studies the stretch marks on his hips, the shrunken muscles of his right thigh, the pink swollen knee he’s been pushing too hard all summer. This is just how he is, even his body pushing against his skin as if to shed it for something newer, stronger, better.

Here’s where his hunger encountered his body, and here’s where his body encountered its own borders. Here, and here. Here.

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


The chain slips. Kageyama falls off his crappy bike and scrapes his knee.

“We’re matching now,” Kageyama says, his expression completely serious. “So you have no excuses.”

Hinata stares at the smear of dried blood on Kageyama’s right knee, then down to his own, wrapped with compression bandages and a bulky brace. In what world are these even remotely the same? That’s so stupid Hinata could cry.

Hinata raises his chin and levels his gaze at Kageyama’s stupid, sincere face. “As if I need to make excuses,” Hinata says. “Dumbass Kageyama. I hope your little boo-boo doesn’t slow you down today.” He sticks out his tongue for good measure, and ignores the way his heart wants to leap out of his chest and maybe bury itself in Kageyama’s or something. Jesus Christ.

Afterwards, sitting across from one another on the turf, Hinata’s braced knee facing Kageyama’s bloody one, Hinata stares down at the clementine in his hands and thinks of how deftly Kageyama’s long fingers had peeled it before tossing it in his direction. “Hey,” Hinata says, before he can stop himself. “Do you wanna—”

Kageyama blinks back at him, so blue, so obliging, and Hinata, possessed with a wild need to keep those eyes on him now, forever, presses on: “Do you wanna go to Sakanoshita Market some day? And we can get pancakes at IHOP after, no one knows this but there’s this one table, in the back, that isn’t sticky. Or not as sticky as the others, anyways. And there’s that old arcade on Elmer street, which isn’t really that far. They have Dance Dance Revolution. And Taiko Drum Master. Bet you can’t beat me.”

Kageyama considers him for a long time. A little crease appears between his eyebrows and finally, he says, the words slow and careful on his tongue, “Are you asking me on a date?”

Hinata nearly chokes on a half-chewed slice of clementine in his mouth. “ _No_ ,” he says, and at the same time his heart seizes with the realization that _that really kinda maybe sounded like I was asking Kageyama Tobio on a date? Was I? Dumbass. Dumbass Hinata._

The crease between Kageyama’s brows deepens, a flush rising on his cheeks, and Hinata wants nothing more than to be the reason for all of Kageyama's blushes.

“No,” he says again, weak. “Yes. Maybe, if you want it to be.” _As long as you hang out with me, and keep staring at me like that, I don’t care_.

Kageyama doesn’t clarify what he does or does not want. Instead, he peels another clementine for Hinata and says, “Okay. After you make the team, let’s go.” 

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


“You remind me of someone I know,” Iwaizumi-san says as he peels the e-stim pads off Hinata’s knee. “A volleyball player. In another world you’re probably overdoing serve practice right along with him. But nope, here you’re biking way too hard on your knee and getting back on the field before I clear you for it.”

Hinata winces. “Technically—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Iwaizumi-san rolls his eyes. “You’re taking it easy, you’re just doing stationary passing drills, not straining your knee at all—trust me, I’ve heard it all.”

Properly chastised, Hinata closes his mouth as Iwaizumi-san velcroes an ice pack in place over his knee. Usually he would set a fifteen-minute timer and leave Hinata to scroll around on his phone until time was up, but today he pulls a chair over and begins updating charts on his laptop.

“You know,” Iwaizumi-san says after a while. “You have a lot more time than you think. You don’t always have to keep running forward like you’re being chased. Your pride isn’t worthless. But neither is your body. Patience, okay?”

Hinata swallows and nods.

Iwaizumi-san smiles. “Good. Now,” he says, holding out a fist. “Tell me what you want to do.”

They do this at the end of every session, but this time Hinata takes a deep breath and tries to believe what he says. “I’m going to get into varsity, score more and more goals every game, and go to nationals.”

“And after that?”

Hinata raises his own fist and knocks their knuckles together. “I’m going to play lacrosse forever. Even when I’m old.”

Iwaizumi-san says nothing, just slides the ice off Hinata’s knee and with his other hand, squeezes his shoulder. _Okay_ , he doesn’t say. _You can do it,_ he doesn’t say. Because that’s up to no one but Hinata. How long forever lasts, how long his body will survive his long list of wants—that’s up to no one but himself.

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


“Hey,” Kageyama says. It’s the last week of summer. The Adlers play their last game of the season tomorrow. Kageyama looks ahead at where the road curves off the horizon and says: “I’m going to kick your ass tomorrow.”

Hinata’s bike rattles over a grate as he yanks it to stop and turns around to look at Kageyama. He’s standing in the middle of the road, the early evening sun glowing behind him, balancing on the slope of his left shoulder like it belongs there. “But I’m not playing,” Hinata says, confused.

“Sounds like you’re already losing, then.” Kageyama’s mouth curves, wicked. A smile, a challenge, a sharp, smug thing that lights Hinata on fire. A thrill that starts in the bone marrow. “Field 4, tomorrow morning at 10 am. You’ll come watch me, right?”

That familiar hunger coils tight in his stomach. 

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


From the bleachers, Hinata watches. 

Below, Kageyama makes another perfect pass. The Adlers score. Hinata wants so much he burns with it.

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


The first day of junior year arrives with little fanfare, except for an endless expanse of clear, azure sky that Hinata takes as a good omen. He nearly crashes into a tree because he’s staring up at all the blue. Okay, so maybe not a good omen. But it’s warm and boundless, the whole world unfolding before him, and Hinata feels like this sky might be wide enough to hold all his wanting. 

He breathes in deep, until his ribs are pushing outwards and his lungs are burning.

“AHHHHHH!!!!!!” he shouts, into the deserted 7 AM streets, miles and miles of slick blacktop and square beige houses and old oak trees, his dingy old bike cutting a path through it all. 

The postman—Hinata thinks his name might be Fred—stares at him strangely when he speeds around the corner.

“Sorry, Mr. Postman!” Hinata calls, lifting a hand from his bike handles to wave.

The man blinks, bewildered, and wishes him a good day at school.

  
  
  


–

  
  
  


Hinata laughs so hard he nearly tips over onto the pavement. Holy shit, no way. _No way._

“Shut the fuck up,” comes Kageyama’s strained voice, and the sound of a car door slamming punctuates his words like an exclamation point. _Tsukishima’s_ car door.

“I can’t believe— _this_ is how you get to school?”

Someone who looks just like a friendly, older version of Tsukishima waves cheerily from the driver’s seat. Tsukishima’s blonde head, followed by Yamaguchi’s mop of dark hair, pop up from the other side of the car. 

Kageyama, by sheer force of will and the kind of turbo-power-walking tall people with long legs do, has put an impressive amount of distance between himself and the car in a matter of seconds. He’s approaching Hinata so fast that Hinata might be alarmed, if not for the way he’s still struggling to get air into his lungs. “ _Tsukishima_ drives you to school,” he wheezes. Even the idea of Tsukishima and Kageyama _knowing_ each other makes his stomach hurt. “Holy shit. You can’t even drive, can you?”

“I turn sixteen in December and the Tsukishimas are family friends,” Kageyama says through his teeth, barely audible. He looks pained beyond belief. Hinata can’t stop smiling. Kageyama is growing closer and closer, his eyes a tonic blue that makes Hinata forget all about how the sight of the sky this morning had given him an answer to his hunger. This blue is better. It sets him alight.

Kageyama is close now, close enough to touch, and then his hand is curling in the collar of Hinata’s shirt. Holding fast. 

Hinata isn’t laughing anymore, but for some reason he still can’t get enough air.

“I hate Tsukishima,” Kageyama starts.

Distantly, the first bell rings. The noise around them thins down to a tripwire as students begin to disperse.

“I hate him, so you better learn how to drive,” Kageyama says, pink from his neck to the tip of his ears. “Then you can—you—me—” His mouth opens and closes around nothing as his ears burn brighter and a frown curls at the corners of his lips.

Hinata would watch him struggle, really, but he’s giddy with laughter and Kageyama’s knuckles are warm where they brush against the hollow of his throat, and that coiling, insatiable thing in his stomach is making him impatient. “Okay. Okay, I’ll pick you up,” Hinata says, words tumbling out into the split open, trembling space between them. He smirks. “But we’re biking, so fix your bike or I’m going to carry you in my front basket.”

Kageyama glowers, and Hinata wants to pinch that little wrinkle between his brows. And kiss it. Maybe. 

“Preseason practices start in a month. Are we going to bike here at five in the morning?”

Hinata isn’t listening. His mind hooked on _preseason. We._

Kageyama cuffs him on the back of the head and leaves his hand there. “Dumbass,” he says, hand curling at the nape of Hinata’s neck. “You’re obviously on the team.”

“That’s literally not what you said a month ago,” Hinata says, petulant, glowing. Skin burning everywhere Kageyama’s gaze touches, eyes catching on his knee, his neck, his mouth, his nose, before settling again on Hinata’s own.

“I said _maybe_. Whatever. Anyways. Yes.”

Hinata squints. “Yes to what?”

Kageyama is so, so red. “Yes to Sakanoshita, _dumbass_. And IHOP and the arcade. The team. All of it.”

Hinata laughs. _Shut up_ , Kageyama says, and then he leans in and shuts him up with his mouth. Holy shit. Hinata’s body empties of everything but the unraveling in his stomach, Kageyama the white-hot center of his want.

He presses his hand slow to Kageyama’s cheek and thinks, _I want to be careful. I want to do this_ , Kageyama’s blush warm against his palm, _again and again, for a long, long time._

The final bell rings.

Hinata lingers, just for a moment, before pulling away. Before he can be swayed into doing something irresponsible like skipping school to kiss Kageyama by the locker rooms all day, he tears his eyes away from Kageyama’s slightly open mouth, the pink high on his cheeks. Staring resolutely into Kageyama’s eyes—pupils blown so wide only a thin ring of blue softens the edges of his irises—Hinata says, buzzing, buoyant, breathless: “You’re late.”

Then he pivots on his right foot and takes off running towards the doors.

“What—oi, be _careful_ —” Kageyama yells, but Hinata hears his sneakers scuffing against the blacktop as he sprints after him. “You’re _LATE TOO, DUMBASS!_ ”

“Not as late as you,” Hinata yells without looking back, his eyes set on the ugly green front doors of the school. Hinata doesn’t do careful. Not like this, with all the world ahead of him and Kageyama on his heels, the bell still ringing impatiently, his knee still braced but no longer held together by nothing but a few withered muscles, too many rolls of ace bandages, and one over-abused ice pack. 

Kageyama reaches the doors at the same time. They shove at each other, laughing, before tumbling inside and into that unknowable space at the end of summer, August still clinging to everyone’s skin like salt-slick stubborn tan lines, September shaking loose the heat-haze of long days that stretch on and on, elastic with no snap.

The clock in the hall says it’s September 10th, 8:11 AM. The clock in the hall says it’s summer forever.

Hinata wants and wants and wants, but he knows patience almost as well as he knows hunger. He has time. And he can have it all. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> my kagehina big bang fic: due literally right now  
> my brain: spiker setter week fic from september go brrrrr
> 
> thank u so much for reading :] pls leave a comment if u feel like it! it will make my day :'))) i'm v happy that after years and years of reading hq fic i've finally written one myself. more to come ?! 
> 
> happy birthday kageyama tobio. you're a king.
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/miwasaeko) (might tweet some meta abt this fic) and [cc](https://curiouscat.me/miwasaeko)


End file.
